Nets forced to rely on small ball lineups until Day’Ron Sharpe returns from injury

Day’Ron Sharpe made a brief cameo at the end of Sunday’s Nets practice in Brooklyn. Although the third year center did not travel with the team Paris, still nursing a hyperextended left knee that is expected to keep him sidelined for at least the next week, he appeared to be in good spirits as he strolled out of the locker room and across the practice courts.

He had a light hearted exchange with head coach Jacque Vaughn and his staff on the way out. The Daily News asked Sharpe how he was doing before he left the building for good. His response? “Y’all will see me soon,” Sharpe said. The Nets were without Sharpe in Thursday’s 111 102 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers at Accor Arena in Paris.

He is not expected to play in Brooklyn’s next four games against the Heat, Trail Blazers, Lakers and Clippers, either. “I got a chance to talk to him when I was in Paris,” Vaughn said. “I was really disappointed. I mean that trip was for him in a sense of being able to experience something different.

[He’s] never been to Paris so I felt bad that he wasn’t able to join us. But we’ll have an update after the two week mark. But he’s in better spirits and that was a good thing, just seeing him today and seeing his smile today.” Sharpe is the Nets’ primary backup center, an enforcer that brings size, physicality and energy to the second unit.

And despite not having him in the lineup on Thursday, the team did not fare too terribly, although the game was not as close as the final score indicated. The Nets’ bench outscored Cleveland’s reserves 58 38. They did surrender 12 offensive rebounds and lost the battle on the glass 47 41 overall, but they did snatch nine offensive rebounds of their own and won the paint 46 34.

No Sharpe meant more small ball lineups for Brooklyn, primarily ones that featured Dorian Finney Smith at the 5. However, the game got out of hand so quickly for the Nets in Brooklyn to where it is hard to evaluate just how successful those lineups were. The fact that Finney Smith and Spencer Dinwiddie were sick made Brooklyn’s small ball success even tougher to assess.

Finney Smith left the game in the second half because of his ailment and did not return. Harry Giles III also played three minutes in Sharpe’s absence. Trendon Watford played just over 12 minutes, finishing with eight points and four rebounds. “It was a little interesting,” Vaughn said. “Not the best of first halves for us to really diagnose… I thought Harry’s limited minutes were good, small ball was OK.

But Dorian and Spencer were under the weather. That part of it allowed Trendon and Lonnie [Walker IV] , so there was some good that came with that, and we saw that in the second half.” It sounds like the Nets will continue to lean on small ball lineups until Sharpe returns, which will lead to some interesting rotation decisions for Vaughn.

In the time in between, the team remains fully aware that it is missing a significant piece. “He’s one of the best rebounders in the NBA and he brings a lot of size and presence to the game,” Cam Johnson said of Sharpe. “So we’re going to have to play a lot more small ball. And [Harry] is going to have to step up and guys will have to alter their roles a little bit… Obviously Nic [Claxton] has been doing a great job all year holding the paint down, but it’s hard to ask him to play 48 [minutes], so we’ll see how it goes.”.